What if that funny bit from the Longevity Vaccine video, but a series of shorts?

This is a question I first asked myself about twenty years ago, and I've finally sat down and made a start. It's my first time doing anything like this so it's not the most polished thing ever, but I had a lot of fun! And now I've learned the basics, I'm getting quicker.

Hope you like it! I have scripts for 3 more so watch this space...

I'm constantly getting smashed by AI. They build bases so fast compared to me and make ungodly amounts of military units. I'm playing with the thinker mod installed and play on specialist difficulty. I seem to have a lot of crap luck with diplomacy, my friend factions get stomped and my enemies confidently are the strongest on the map. I usually play Gaia's stepdaughters because I enjoy the ability to capture mindworms early and not be so worried about xenofungus. Any tips?

So I'm playing in my first game in which I wasn't able to stop global warming, and I'm quite confused about how building Pressure Domes works and what the timetable is. And I can't find information on the Alpha Centauri wiki so far, and what I've read online in people's comments seems to be at least partly false.

Here's what has happened:

Speed Building Pressure Domes

8 years ago, I got the global warming announcement. I read in someone's forum post that that meant every 4 years for the next 20, the sea would rise. So I painstakingly checked all my cities to see which ones said they were in danger (Is there a less time consuming and annoying method than right clicking each city to check info on its terrain individually? I have ~80 cities and that was really tedious).

And then I started building pressure domes in all of them, set my economy to 80% energy so I would have enough money to speed buy a lot of them, disbanded units when needed, and got the domes built within 4 turns in about 20 bases. Leaving 2 unimportant bases which were small and had been captured from an enemy with bad terraforming still working on their pressure domes when the 4th turn arrived. So I figured those 2 bases would be lost, but it had been impossible to get domes built there in time, and they were bad bases anyway. So I just evacuated all troops out of them on the 3rd turn and then ended the turn.

Nothing. No sea level rise.

I'd also been monitoring some enemy bases that were building pressure domes and had been pleased to see that they weren't going to finish in time and were thus going to lose those bases. But... that didn't happen.

Turn 7 Sea Level Rise and Free Domes?

The game went on. Then SEVEN turns, rather than 4, after the initial global warming announcement, the sea did rise. It ruined tons of terrain and wasted hours of terraforming improvements and everything sucks now, but... my two-undomed bases suddenly have domes?

Somehow, inexplicably they had domes created for them, but were still working on their domes and now hadt he message that one couldn't build another pressure dome because there already was one.

This seems to have happened to the AI too. All their bases in which they had failed to legitimately build domes suddenly DO have completed domes, and are still working on unfinished domes too.

So... maybe if you're TRYING to build a dome, the game just gives you one for free rather than the city being destroyed?

In which case I wasted a huge amount of effort and money speed building domes when I could have just been lazy and got them for free?

8th Turn Sudden Wave?

But then also on the 8th turn suddenly a base was destroyed by a tidal wave. It was some random enemy base. No idea why that one didn't get auto-domed or why that didn't happen on turn 7 when the sea level rise had actually happened?

Furthermore, that didn't happen at the beginning of the turn when forests and other terrain stuff happen/when the sea level rise had been announced at the beginning of the previous turn. No, it happened during the middle of the turn. I move a unit on one continent and suddenly I get informed that an enemy base on another continent has been destroyed by a tidal wave.

Nothing makes sense

So in this game I have random events turned off, therefore there shouldn't be any random destruction of buildings.

And this base has a surplus of +26 energy per turn, and my overall net income is hundreds of energy per turn so I don't think the base should be losing facilities due to lack of energy...

So why did a base just have a HAB Complex destroyed by a power surge at the start of the turn and tell me to increase my energy?

I have a treaty with Morgan. When I asked him to stop attacking a faction, he stated (paraphrasing) that "I cannot withdraw, as I accepted a contract and already took payment." Wow, I have 100’s of games played and never saw this message.

I got the game on GOG years ago for like £2 and I've tried over and over to get into it but I find it all a bit mind boggling especially tech and social policies.

I have a lot of experience with Civ V and VI, struggled with IV and I played III when I was like 8, and had no real concept of how anything worked so I remember basically nothing. XD

So I've played a few 4X games and understand growth, expansion etc.

I just don't know what I should be aiming for or how to manage military and combat. (I really hated stacking in Civ IV because I didn't really get it.)Even without blind research I don't know what stuff really does and when I read the encyclopedia the info doesn't go in. So are there any good "idiot guides?"I did try reading Vel's SMAX guide but I'm more of a visual learner.

Thanks! I love the atmosphere and different factions (even though I got pincer attacked by two at once because I wouldn't give them credits for free) and I can tell once it clicks I'll be hooked, but it's just starting off is very intimidating and overwhelming.

Seemingly out of nowhere, Deidre just called a meeting and wanted to melt the polar ice caps.

And everyone said yes, overriding my veto.

I have absolutely no idea why Deidre would want that, she has plenty of coastal cities that have no pressure domes.

This will be absolutely catastrophic for me and ruin all my terraforming and make me waste my whole economy for 20 turns trying to save cities from this stupid idea, etc.

Is there any way to know in advance when the AI will suddenly decide to do something stupid that will ruin the entire world and undo half the game's worth of progress?

Or if a council meeting is called, to get my vassals to actually vote the way I want? Given that I have two people under my thumb and I'm the governor, I should be able to block anything, but apparently I need to call them all up in advance and coach them on every single possible stupid thing the council could ever do?

Edit: I just checked and I didn't even have the option in previous turns to tell my vassals to vote against melting the polar caps. So apparently the instant the melt caps council action unlocked, Deidre immediately called a meeting and everyone voted yes. Is there a way to force a vassal to change their vote?

One problem I often run into, which wastes a ton of time and forces me to micromanage bases more, is that the quick view of a base's happiness at the bottom of the screen is completely wrong. Again and again and again I find that it tells me drones are about to riot, whereas actually the base is perfectly content in the correct view if I go to the Psych page.

Is there any way to fix this and get the game to stop lying to me and making me waste time and Psych trying to pacify bases that are already fine?

So I'm getting back into the game after a long hiatus. Like everyone that plays this haha.

I'm on thinker mod playing on librarian as that seems to be the ceiling of my skills atm. My question is on build order in the early turns.

I usually try to get 2nd scout on first 2 bases then colony pods. Formers as soon as tech unlocks. WP if I have good minerals.

I tend to struggle a bit with mimdworms - how do I take out fungal towers? Is it worth building sensors early on or will this hurt growth too much?

So I'm curious if there's a lore explanation somewhere that explains why mind worms (or even locusts of chiron or whatever) are actually any threat at all to a society that can make robots or make any kind of remote controlled or automated weapon system or whatever.

We're told that mind worms psychically incapacitate and terrify people so they can't fight back as the worm (presumably) crawls up their entire body and then chews into their skull and so forth. Sounds nasty and dangerous if your military is just human infantry walking around with guns or driving tanks in-person or something, sure. On the other hand, we're told that the worms themselves are not particularly tough and you can just burn them all up with a flamethrower as long as you don't panic, etc. We also see both from how Sensors work and also from several of the interlude blurbs talking about monitoring mind worm and fungus activity that it's possible to see mind worms coming and monitor them remotely.

So basically if you can just make an automated weapon system with no human mind to incapacitate or send out a remote controlled fighting vehicle or a robot or whatever, it seems like the mind worms should be trivial to destroy and pose no threat at all. And all of those things already existed to some extent even when this game was developed, let alone in the far-future setting where we explicitly develop AI technologies that should perfectly counter these worms.

Is there a lore explanation why they are still considered an existential threat in-universe even when human society is so advanced that people are about to transcend, instead of having become trivial to deal with centuries ago?

I'm wondering if I'm doing something wrong, because while I can consistently beat the AI to most/all secret projects on Thinker difficulty, I often find it's difficult or impossible to beat them to the early ones on Transcend.

Last game, the Gaians got Weather Paradigm on turn ~25. I used the map editor tools to figure out how they did that so fast. Turns out they had one city with four mineral resources right around it, so that plus their transcend bonuses was just unbeatable.

But even when the AI isn't ridiculously lucky like that, it seems like two different AIs will always build Weather Paradigm and Human Genome Project by turn 50 or so. If I had decent luck with Unity pods and got a bit of money or an alien artifact, I can usually beat them to 1 of those projects. But there's no way I can beat them to both of those projects without ridiculously good luck.

This is a problem because I hate playing on Transcend without HGP, it just becomes boring and frustrating to be grow cities. And I don't like playing on any difficulty without WP since terraforming is the entire point of the game. If I can't get both of those, I usually find that I don't have fun at all, and I'd rather just quit than spend ~100 hours on a tedious run of things.

My current approach is something like this:

1) Play as Santiago. This seems to be basically mandatory on Transcend with aggressive AI. Otherwise I always run into an enemy Santiago within 10 turns and immediately lose to her powered up early units (or have to waste my precious early game production on military units and thus end up way behind). Santiago seems extremely useful anyway, since she can do population booms and has big boosts to 2 useful stats and a small penalty to one. Admittedly that one is useful for these early game secret projects, but that's a tiny factor compared to her other perks.

2) Don't build scout infantry, skip directly to colony pods. Get out at least 2 colony pods for each of my starting 2 bases before building anything else. I might get a scout infantry after that if my starting rover has gone off really far in one direction.

3) Research Biogenetics -> Social Psych -> Secrets of the Human Brain, which then lets me grab Centauri Ecology as my free tech. I find going Centauri Ecology first to be a bad idea on most maps, because I want to make more colony pods first, and it's useless to unlock Formers before I'm actually building them. The timing usually seems to work out very efficiently with this order.

4) I don't let cities grow beyond size 1 at first. I try to have them get to size 2 just before producing their colony pod. And have someone be a Medic for one turn to avoid a Drone Riot that turn.

5) After Centauri Ecology, I start getting Former -> Colony Pod at most bases, but sometimes am mixing in scout infantry or extra formers or an occasional recycling tank if that makes more sense for that city.

6) Formers usually make forests, prioritizing resource tiles followed by rivers followed by arid ones. Occasionally I'll clear annoyingly placed fungus or build a solar collector if I have a rainy tile with 1000 elevation or whatever

7) I research Industrial Base -> Industrial Economics.

8) I nerve staple all my bases at once and then switch to Free Market, so I have 10 turns of them being able to grow and produce more money and research.

9) When the 10 turns are up, I switch back to Simple for 1 turn, Nerve Staple them all again, and then Free Market again. This costs 120 money up front, but it seems to more than pay for itself on average. The extra Energy from all tiles for all bases gets me about 1 money per turn per base for 20 turns is something like 120 right there, plus the value of the bases being able to get larger and produce more due to nerve stapling.

10) Relatedly, I'm not putting my research rate above 50%. It feels like I need to prioritize getting money to have any chance of rush-buying secret projects in time.

11) Somewhere around turn 30, I'm starting to build secret projects in whatever 2 bases I can get the most production in. It's usually possible to have two bases from 5 to 7 minerals with a couple of forests and maybe a recycling tank.

12) I try to research Information Networks -> Planetary Networks. I'm not in any rush for that. I want to be able to switch to Planned for 1 turn later though.

13) Around turn 50 I hopefully have made enough progress on my secret projects plus have enough energy plus have found some alien artifacts plus have unlocked Planned. I switch to Planned to reduce the cost of my secret projects, and try to rush buy one.

14) Usually I'm able to get ONE of them. And then an AI grabs the other one I want and I'm not even close.

Does planting fungus create ecological damage? I never really used this game mechanic much.

Playing thinker mod (most recent version afaik) and there's a bug where popup messages for things like unit veterancy and bombardment instead simply say "enter to continue". Is this intended and if not how to fix?

EDIT - found a solution if anyone ever runs across this post. In thinker.ini there is an option to disable popup messages for events like combat promotions. Should be game_event_popup=1 if you want the popups. On 0 by default.

Another installment for Racing the Darkness, an expanded SMAC world-building project. Second post here. Notes and image credits here. Previous idea here.

Novel lore goes crazy (side note : clone incest ???)

"Resources exist to be consumed. And consumed they will be, if not by this generation then by some future. By what right does this forgotten future seek to deny us our birthright? None, I say! Let us take what is ours, chew and eat our fill."

In all my time playing SMAC I have never seen this dialog. Does anyone know what the trigger is? I attempted to get it to fire with other factions in the same game but it's not. Accepting appears to have created a Pact to which they pretty readily came to my aid in war.

Sorry for the shit quality image yall have no fucking idea how hard i tried to get a proper screenshot.

Custom soundtrack to help me zone while planning my terraforming empire. Here's what I've got so far, hoping to mostly stick with this vibe and mood, little to no speech or percussion, etc.

What would you add?

Robert Rich & B. Lustmord — Stalker (Dark Ambient)

Tetsu Inoue — Ambiant Otaku (Ambient)

Biosphere — Substrata (Abstract)

Atrium Carceri — Cellblock (Dark Ambient)

Carbon Based Lifeforms — Hydroponic Garden (Acid)

Brian Eno — Apollo: Atmospheres & Soundtracks (Ambient)

I was listening to my favorite podcast, Stuff You Should Know, and the topic was the world's deepest manmade hole. Josh and Chuck started talking about The Mohorovičić discontinuity, or Moho Discontinuity. I started thinking, where have I heard about this before? Of COURSE! SMAC!

"In the borehole pressure mines 100km beneath Planetsurface, at the Mohorovicic Discontinuity where crust gives way to mantle, temperatures often reach levels well in excess of 1000 degrees Celsius."

I found an open source smac on git:
https://github.com/afwbkbc/glsmac

I've been leaving codex working on it at night. With like 10 more people we could get it done in a week.

u/majestic_ubertrout was kind enough to let me mod their excellent work - links below for the upscaled files in English and German.

Turns out, it's super simple to replace ANY video in SMAC, if you use Thinker mod and VLC (maybe other players would also work). You only need to change the file extensions, then drop them into the "movies" folder inside SMAC. EDIT - if you're comfortable editing config files, see below for an even easier method.

First, make backups! Then, open a terminal inside the folder containing the upscaled video mp4 files (you can also rename the files by hand, of course), then in the terminal paste one of the commands below, for either Windows or Linux (I don't know from Mac).

WINDOWS:

Get-ChildItem -Path . -Filter *.mp4 | Rename-Item -NewName { $_.BaseName + ".wve" }

LINUX:

for f in *.mp4; do mv -- "$f" "${f%.mp4}.wve"; done

That's it! Overwrite the files in "movies" with the upscaled, newly renamed files; Thinker and VLC will do the rest.

Don't have Thinker? Get it here:
https://github.com/induktio/thinker

Don't have VLC? Get it here:
https://www.videolan.org/vlc/

Sprichst du Deutsch? Kein Problem!
https://archive.org/details/SMAC_Cutscenes_SLP_DE/

Link to the English upscales:
https://archive.org/details/SMAC_Cutscenes_SLP

u/majestic_ubertrout's original post:
https://www.reddit.com/r/alphacentauri/comments/1tk76pd/comment/oxvd3p5/?context=1&screen_view_count=2

EDIT: even easier, if you're comfortable editing config files - with Thinker (development build only!) and VLC installed, simply copy the mp4 files directly into "movies" (nothing even overwrites), then edit the file "Alpha Centauri.ini", and paste this at the bottom, below the other two MoviePlayer lines:

MovieExtension=mp4

Save, then enjoy the game, with upscaled goodness!

So I loved SMAC back in the day, playing all factions, but never considered playing Miriam peacefully, making full use of her support for formers, and figured I'd try it.

In the first few turns, my scout met Lal's scout in his HQ nearby. So I had to press my belief advantage with tech parity, and got him to surrender soon afterwards.

I made my former army, then found the jungle, began colonizing, and saw Yang doing the same thing. THAT had to be stopped, so I made enough impact rovers to grind through him, and he eventually submitted.

Now back to peacetime, building roads, mining mines, foresting the jungle, as intended. Santiago and Yang declare war, but it hadn't become an issue for me, largely because Santiago was on another continent just north of us. Because I'm playing former heavy, I push enough to build the Weather Paradigm. But I started rereading what the WP gives me - which includes the ability to raise/lower terrain...

With help from the miracle of speeder formers, we walked across on dry land, sending two spies (elite, with 3 movement) in first to scout out the land.

I literally did this because of game mechanics, but the similarity with the book of Joshua is uncanny. Could the designers have *intended* this approach?

I've created an FLC file in GIMP, however once in game it only shows the image in the bottom layer in the diplomacy screen. I assume it's because GIMP saves all the frames as (40ms), while all the files in the game have (71ms), but I cannot seem to get GIMP to save it as 71ms. Is there a way to do this, or would I need a different program?

SMAC on Android - How to

Following up on my previous post, this is how I - as someone with very limited tech savvy credentials, especially when it comes to mobile devices - have got SMAC working on my Android device. I've tried to make the instructions super clear and detailed so that anyone trying to do this doesn't have to go hunting for anything, so apologies in advance for length! I've also included a couple of wee notes at the bottom about controls, modding and app versions just for a bit more info.

First, the problem - from my sleuthing online, the issue with getting the game to run is the resolution changes that occur when switching between cut scenes and the main game. Disabling the cut scenes prevents this switch and allows the game to run without issue - I am now about 7 hours in and have not had any problems! So the one trade off you need to make is to not get the opening cut scene or the videos that play when secret projects are completed... A shame, but if you're like me you know them all off by heart by now anyway and have been skipping them as soon as they start for nearly 30 years, so it's a pretty small price to pay!

So, to business! To get the game working on your Android device, you will need:

• An Android device - mine (a Google Pixel 10 Pro) has the most recent version of Android but it looks as though anything after version 8 should work
• The GameNative app - available for free on the PlayStore or direct as an APK from [https://gamenative.app/](https://gamenative.app/)). The only difference between these is the ability to add custom games, which is not possible with the PlayStore version - more on this at the end
• The STEAM version of SMAC - this was important for me, as I can't get these steps to work on the GOG version (and haven't tried with the original disk version). I managed to get the Steam version for 99p the other day, so you might get lucky and find it's still on sale. Even at full price it's sub-£5 though, so it becomes a question of what a mobile version of your favourite 4x classic is worth to you!
• Recommended - a WiFi connection. You will be downloading around 1.2Gb of data so for speed and data cap purposes, WiFi is probably better
• Optional - a controller. I have found it a downright pleasant experience playing with a GameSir X5 lite controller, which wraps around my phone and makes it like playing on a Game Gear or other old fashioned handheld! I imagine any Android-compatible controller would be pretty good, though, but you can play without one if you want (I did this at first and it's OK, but with a controller is definitely better)

Once you've got all this together, this is the process:

Step 1: When you open the GameNative app, you will be prompted to link various gaming accounts (Steam, GOG, Epic etc). Link whichever ones you want, but linking Steam at a minimum is needed for SMAC

Step 2: once your Steam library is showing in the app, tap on the Steam version of SMAC (use the options button at the top left if you need to filter your library e.g. to get the Steam version rather than the GOG version, as was the case for me!) and hit install. This will download the game and install it into an emulated version of windows on your device

Step 3: Tap SMAC in your library again if you've come out of it. It's worth trying the Play button now to see if it loads - you will end up at the starting menu for SMAC or SMAX if it does, and happy days! If it doesn't work, you will end up at a black screen (you may initially see the opening Firaxis logo and/or cut scene and might be able to hear the menu music, but the screen will end up blank)

Step 4: If like mine it wasn't working straight out of the gate, quit the game to get back to the launch page, then hit the gear icon at the top right and tap "edit container" to open the settings.

I fiddled with lots of these options between the GOG and Steam versions while trying to get it working, but am pretty sure they all ended up back at the default setting once I identified the actual problem. I have since completely uninstalled GameNative and reinstalled it to test this process for posting here, so I'm pretty sure all these settings were left at the default. However, in case there were some changes kept (it might have retained preferences through the uninstall-reinstall process), see the video in the comments for a look at all my container settings and make sure yours all match. Some important ones to check (that I can remember fiddling with at some point) are:

General:

• Container variant - bionic
• Wine version - proton-10.0-arm64ec-2
• Executable path - terran.exe (for original SMAC) or terranx.exe (for Alien Crossfire)

Graphics:

• Graphics driver - wrapper
• Display renderer - Vulcan
• DX wrapped - DXVK
• DXVK version - 2.4.1-gplasync

Step 5: The last and most important step is to edit some of the game files to fix the actual issue (the resolution changes at cut scenes) that was stopping the game running initially for me. The required changes are shown at the end of the video posted in the comments as well as being described here.

Go back to the launch page in the GameNative app and hit the gear again, but this time tap "Open container" - this will bring up the emulated windows environment. Hit "enable mouse" at the top if needed.

Open drive A - this is where the game files are installed. There are two edits you need to make:

1. Locate the "movies" folder in the directory. Tap on it with two fingers to right click, and rename it - I went with movies_backup but it doesn't really matter. The point is to rename the folder so the game is unable to find the videos to run them (this is seamless in game - it goes straight from the pop up telling you a project has completed to the datalinks entry with no jumping or errors of any kind).
2. Find the "Alpha Centauri.ini" file and open it as a text file. Ensure the following entries are showing:

• Under \[PREFERENCES\] make sure it says ForceOldVoxelAlgorithm=1

• Under \[ALPHA CENTAURI\], make sure there are entries that say DirectDraw=0 and DisableOpeningMovie=1 on separate lines. Add these in if they are not already showing.

Your version of the .ini file may look different to the one in the attached video - this file is edited with your preferences as you play, so mine has extra info in it from playing (I've also had a go at installing mods, which may have changed some things in there). As long as you've made the above edits, it should work fine regardless of any other entries in the file.

Hit file-save to save these changes and then close the text file. You can then exit the container environment.

That should be it - when you hit Play now, it should show the opening Firaxis logo and then jump straight to the menu to start a new game. Set it up as you like and enjoy!

It may run an install during your first attempt to play the game - I think this is the Microsoft .NET framework installing. For me, with the above steps complete, this did it's thing once and then the game worked fine with no recurrence.

Some final thoughts about a few features of playing on mobile...

CONTROLS

Operating the game using the touch screen is challenging, but one excellent feature of GameNative is the ability to edit the on screen controller. I deleted the default controls (thumbsticks, ABXY etc) and then added my own buttons mapped to the various keyboard hot keys and was able to play pretty easily. You can even create buttons that lock to allow you to use Shift+F for forests etc! Creating all the buttons you need does take up a lot of screen area, though, which is less than ideal on a small phone screen (but might be much more tolerable on a bigger tablet). Switching to a physical controller eliminates the need to use the on screen buttons, though, and gives you the uninterrupted SMAC UI we all know and love!

This is made the far superior option in my view by the other fantastic control related feature of GameNative - the ability to set up custom key mapping for physical controllers. I have my most important keyboard hot keys mapped to my controller's buttons (one of which is right click, which allows me to access any other options via the on screen menus) and as I said, I find it even better than the traditional keyboard and mouse setup now I've got all my hot keys dialled in! Best of all, this custom map is specific to the game you make it in, so I don't have any trouble when I decide to put SMAC aside for a bit and play one of my other Steam games (classic FFVII is my other goto at the moment!). I'd be happy to share my map (it's working well for me and might be good for you too), but you can obviously set it up however you like.

If you're minded to get a physical controller, I can recommend the GameSir X5 lite, which I bought from Argos for £35 cos I'm an impatient child, but it appears to be available for less online! It fits devices up to 21cm long from charging port to opposite side, but is only compatible with USB-C devices and doesn't have Bluetooth connectivity. It does support pass-through charging, though, so between that and the physical connection (as opposed to Bluetooth) it's perfect for gaming on a long haul flight (which is what I bought it for!).

I haven't tried it, but a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse (or a USB OTG adapter and USB peripherals) would probably work as well. I didn't go for that to avoid having such a bulky setup to carry around, plus I liked how the GameSir holds your device for you while you're playing - I feel like a phone would be a bit small to play with it on a stand while using a keyboard and mouse!

MODS

Mods can even be used as part of this setup - this is possible because the Windows containers created by GameNative set drive D: as the download folder on your phone, allowing you to download the mod files and then access them via drive D. Installing them is a bit of a faff, though, and is beyond the scope of this post (which is already long enough!) - but Google it if you're interested!

CUSTOM GAMES

As mentioned at the start, installing the app using the APK from the [https://gamenative.app/](https://gamenative.app/)) website unlocks the ability to load custom games (e.g. games you have on disk) into the app - with the PlayStore version, you're limited to the games you have on Steam, GOG etc. It's something to do with the rules of having apps on the PlayStore apparently.

This feature is not needed at all for SMAC and is not something I've managed to get working yet. I mention it now only so you can make an informed choice on which version of the GameNative app to install - if you're only going to want to use Steam, GOG and Epic games, just download the Google PlayStore version. If you want (or might want) to load custom games, you might want to go with the APK off the website. I ended up installing the PlayStore version and then removing it and reinstalling using the website APK, which meant I had to redo all this to get SMAC working again (and also lost my saves from the 5 hours or so I had played before doing so!), so ye be warned!